The invention relates to systems and methods for generating web pages to be displayed on distributed networks, such as the World Wide Web. More particularly, the invention relates to systems and methods for providing users of a hand-held device, such as a personal digital assistant (PDA) or digital camera, with the capability to author web pages without being limited by the system resources of the hand-held device.
The distributed network known as the Internet is a global array of cooperatively interconnected computer networks. It includes the World Wide Web, which is a collection of websites defined by web serversxe2x80x94computers that store and retrieve computer files that represent web pages that are requested by and displayed to users of the Internet. Web pages combine text, graphic images, animation, audio and other multimedia forms for presentation to viewers. In the Web environment, client machines communicate with Web servers using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which uses a standard page description language known as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). HTML provides basic document formatting and allows the developer to specify xe2x80x9clinksxe2x80x9d to other servers and files.
It is known to provide web page authoring tools, such as xe2x80x9cFRONTPAGExe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cFRONTPAGE EXPRESSxe2x80x9d developed by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond Wash., which give web page authors the ability to quickly and efficiently create compelling web pages. Much of the power of these tools is derived from the use of style templates, which contain predefined HTML formatting commands for predetermined styles. With templates, a web page author avoids the tedious task of manually entering hundreds of HTML formatting commands. Because of the need to store large libraries of templates and other large files, such as background bitmaps, state-of-the-art web-authoring tools require computer platforms with relatively large amounts of system resources, i.e. memory.
There is a recent growing trend towards the use of portable hand-held computing devices that offer portability, but which provide somewhat limited computing features. Known hand-held devices, such as PDAs, provide for the storage and retrieval addresses and other information, sending and receiving of e-mail via communications link and other functionality defined by resident software applications. PDAs offer the capability of remote connectivity to a desktop computer or to the Internet using a communications link, enabling users to upload and download information, and to synchronize information stored in the PDA with information on a host computer, from virtually any geographic location. Hand-held devices also include rather specialized platforms, such as digital cameras, which provide users with the capability of instantly recording electronic images on a removable storage device, such as a floppy diskette, for later viewing on a desktop computer. From the desktop computer, users may send the image files to their friends via e-mail, post them to an existing website on the World Wide Web, or incorporate them into their own website. As the user interfaces and features of digital cameras become more sophisticated, they may tend to incorporate much of the functionality of PDAs
One consequence of the compact designs and low weights consumers desire in hand-held electronic devices is that such devices are limited in the amount of system resources, namely memory and screen size, that they provide. Although the portability of hand-held devices make them attractive as web-authoring platforms, they have not heretofore been considered as feasible platforms for web creation, primarily because of their limited system resources. It would therefore be desirable to provide a web-authoring system and method which are suitable for implementation on a hand-held device, such as a PDA or a digital camera. Such a system and method would permit users of digital cameras, for example, to create compelling web pages that incorporate digital images they have recorded xe2x80x9con-the-spotxe2x80x9d and provide their own textual information for presentation to others on the World Wide Web.
The invention provides for the creation of web pages on hand-held devices such as PDAs and digital cameras. In general, the invention provides for the downloading of data from a hand-held device (client) while simultaneously, in a one-step operation, substituting user-defined data into templates stored on a larger computer platform (host). A user of the invention will be able to remotely author, on their hand-held device (client), a web page styled according to their own preference.
One aspect of the invention involves the generation of large HTML files on the host computer under control of a compact mapping file that is a generated on a hand-held client computer. The mapping file may be created using a graphic user interface on the hand-held device which allows the user to associate particular ones of a library of templates with text and images, which may be stored on the hand-held device. In a one-step synchronization operation when the hand-held device is connected to a host computer, the mapping file controls the creation of a main HTML file. Specifically, templates referenced in the mapping file are retrieved from host memory and xe2x80x9cfilled inxe2x80x9d with the appropriate information according to the mapping file. Finally, the main HTML file and any source files (e.g. images, audio files) it points to are transferred from the host to the appropriate location on the web server to create the web page.
A primary advantage provided by the invention is that HTML templates (files containing the actual and usually lengthy formatting commands that accomplish the style selected by the user) and other large files needed to create compelling web pages reside on the host computer, not on the hand-held device. Another advantage provided by the invention is that web creation may occur automatically, using a one-step synchronization operation, thereby eliminating the need for a web author to manually orchestrate the transfer of appropriate source files and text. In the case of a digital camera, the invention provides users with the capability to create web page content incorporating digital images stored in the camera and, from a location remote from the host computer, present those images in a compelling format on the World Wide Web. This solution also reduces the amount of data (bandwidth) that needs to be transferred from the hand-held device and the main PC.